Labour in the lead, say polls, but a coalition with Plaid not impossible
Next week Wales votes in the Senedd election. Here, Political editor-at-large Martin Shipton assesses what the polls are predicting about the results
WITH five days to go before polling day, all the indications are that Labour will remain the largest party.
The interesting questions are how many seats they will win and whether they go into coalition with Plaid Cymru.
It’s been an extraordinary election campaign, fought at a time when the playing out of the Covid crisis has been at the forefront of everyone’s minds.
While each of the parties has been trying to persuade us that theirs is the best route to economic recovery, most people have been preoccupied with when they will be getting their vaccinations.
In England the polls suggest this has led to a bounce in the polls for Boris Johnson, but in Wales the runes are less easy to read.
Here the responsibility for handling the crisis, and for rolling out the vaccines, has rested with Mark Drakeford’s Welsh Labour government.
Polling suggests that, in Wales, his perceived cautious approach is appreciated much more than the flamboyant style of Boris Johnson.
Yet there will be those who give the credit to the Prime Minister.
Had there been no Covid crisis, the election would have been framed in a very different way.
Both the Conservatives and Plaid Cymru would have been able to make more of their “time for a change” mantras.
Labour is certainly vulnerable to charges that they have not moved Wales forward in the 22 years they have been in power.
It is true that a case can be made that in the three main policy areas – health, education and the economy – there have been failings.
But polls indicate that neither of the main two opposition parties has been able to gain sufficient momentum to displace Labour from its position as Wales’ leading party.
Partly that’s because the antiLabour vote is split, and partly because both the Conservatives and Plaid Cymru have drawbacks of their own.
The Conservatives have not sought to carve out a distinctively Welsh niche for themselves, and have largely hitched themselves to Mr Johnson’s wagon. While this may satisfy their core supporters – most of whom would like the Senedd to be abolished – it is likely to have limited traction beyond that.
Nevertheless, there are several Labour seats that are vulnerable to the Conservatives.
They gained six formerly Labour constituencies in Wales at the 2019 General Election. Whether they can repeat the performance next week depends very much on turnout. In the past, a significant proportion of Tory voters have not bothered to vote in “Assembly” elections because they have not considered it important to their lives.
Such a position is more difficult to take after a year in which a Labour First Minister has been able to lay down rules about when they can leave their homes.
Plaid Cymru is able to enthuse most of the voters who back Welsh independence, but in the country as a whole such people remain in the minority.
Plaid had hoped to pick up votes from the growing number of Labour supporters who back independence, but Mr Drakeford’s perceived success in handling the pandemic may peg back the number of such defections.
There are few opportunities for Plaid to pick up new “first past the post” seats, so they will be looking to make gains on the regional lists.
It’s unclear what impact the Abolish the Welsh Assembly Party will have on the outcome of the election.
In some polls they have been getting 8% of the regional list vote, which may be enough to win them
The Conservatives have not sought to carve out a distinctively Welsh niche for themselves MARTIN SHIPTON
several seats. But it’s worth recalling that it took 13% of the regional list vote at the last election in 2016 for Ukip to win seven seats,
Abolish’s hope of sneaking into the Senedd on the back of a populist tide could be undone by the presence on ballot papers of other insurgent parties like Reform UK (formerly the Brexit Party), Propel and what remains of Ukip.
Vote splitting and failing to make the cut is an occupational hazard for small parties.
Some “first past the post” constituencies may be very tight.
The Conservatives should win in the Vale of Glamorgan, for example, but Labour’s Jane Hutt, who has represented the seat since the then National Assembly was established in 1999, is a great survivor.
Each party’s performance in constituency seats will also determine how many regional seats they are entitled to when the list votes are counted.
The allocation of regional seats, based as it is on a mathematical formula, is also likely to be tight.
While Labour’s polling lead has been consistent nationally, the size of the lead has varied.
Partly this is to do with the different methodologies used by different poll firms, with all of them in the dark about the turnout among 16and 17-year-olds, who will be able to participate for the first time.
Parties themselves have been hampered by their inability until very recently to undertake traditional door-to-door canvassing because of lockdown restrictions.
That has limited their access to data that would give them a fair idea about how they are doing.
After the votes have been counted on Friday, and perhaps Saturday, the greatest irony will be if Plaid Cymru enters a coalition government with Labour because of the latter’s loss of seats to the Conservatives.